DOOM 3 Capped
on IGN (thanks Frans) relates a tidbit about DOOM 3 gleaned at a recent
NVIDIA editor's day, where they learned that the game will be capped at a
maximum 60 FPS framerate. They quote id's John Carmack on the reason for this.

"The game tic simulation, including player movement, runs at 60hz, so if
it rendered any faster, it would just be rendering identical frames. A fixed tic
rate removes issues like Quake 3 had, where some jumps could only be made at
certain framerates. In Doom, the same player inputs will produce the same
motions, no matter what the framerate is."

In a mostly unrelated
note, we'd like to thank IGN for doing a story today on DOOM 3 and NVIDIA (who
prefer their name be shown that way in print) to help celebrate INTRNATIONAL
CAPS LOCK DAY.

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We had a hint of this at Quakecon 2002. After the keynote (I think it was after the keynote) about 20 or 30 of us piled into a room for a little Q and A with John C. I seem to remember him discussing tick rates and how it was going to limit the maximum multiplayer limit. I guess it makes sense that setting a hard limit imposes a relative performance from all machines in multiplayer and probably does something to guarantee a certain level of performance overall.

Doesn't really matter anyway - 60fps is certainly fast enough.

Of course, everytime I say that I feel a little like Bill Gates - "No one will ever need more than 640k"